LOOMING LABOR SHORTAGE EQUALS BABY BOOMER OPPORTUNITY
According
to many sources, there is a coming labor shortage that will occur as
Baby Boomers retire and there are not as many new workers coming into
the labor market.
One group of statistics states that 70 million Baby Boomers will retire or at least reach retirement age in the next 15 years. These statistics also reveal that only 40 million new workers will come in to the labor market.
While this is indeed a large gap, there is an additional factor that promises to make this gap even wider. This gap is in the area of skills. The majority of these 70 million Baby Boomers are native-born, language proficient, skilled workers. These Baby Boomers possess many learning and adapting skills developed through the educational process and by life experience. The
40 million coming behind them are often lacking in basic learning
skills which handicaps them for more complex job functions.
According
to Neil Lebovits, president of Ajilon, a specialty-staffing firm,
"There are more than 90 million Americans whose literacy and numeric
skills are at the 10th-grade level or below. If you consider education and training, the coming talent shortage and 'talent wars' will be even more serious."
Businesses
in the services area, who require knowledgeable workers with
specialized skill sets in various industries, definitely foresee a
problem with the labor supply. Over the past few years, these businesses have noticed a lower level of ability in basic skills. Robert Grossman, author of “The Truth About the coming Labor Shortage” printed in HR Magazine, says that in basic English more than 60% of employers rate high-school graduates’ skills as fair or poor. He goes on to say it is undeniable that change in the workforce and its capability are right around the corner. The effect on specific industries remains to be seen.
Some companies and industries have already set up strategies to attract, develop and retain quality, skilled employees. Many are using more than one strategy to do this. These strategies include:
- Formalized coaching and mentoring to capitalize on the work experience and transfer of knowledge from older workers to younger workers.
- Creating their own in-house university to provide retraining, upgrading, and continuing education.
- Creating a school within their business model to train workers themselves, even those who do not work for them. They are growing their own talent rather than relying on outside sources.
- Investing in training, development and continuing education. Specifically developing learning skills such as non-routine cognitive skills, abstract reasoning, problem-solving, communication and collaboration.
- Investing in older workers. The number of people aged 55 to 64 is expected to grow by 51%, four times the average for all age groups. Workers aged 65 and older is a segment also expected to grow by over 50%. These people have significant skills, experience, and mature reasoning abilities that need to be utilized and transferred to younger workers.
This
is good news for some Baby Boomers, who may experience income troubles
with reduced Social Security and Medicare benefits available. The need for their skills could allow them to work many years longer than has been the norm for other generations of workers.
With a drop in the U. S. skilled labor pool, many more jobs could be transferred overseas. In the past, most of these jobs have been in the manufacturing and processing industries. But
without good basic business skills such as reading, spelling, grammar,
simple mathematics, typing, telephone etiquette, and conversational
abilities in our labor pool, service jobs may begin to disappear as
well.
For
the past 15 to 20 years, many students entering community colleges
spend their first year and much of the second year taking remedial
English and Math courses. This is costly for the students
and their families and costly for the government because many students
in these institutions receive federal and state grant money to attend
post-secondary schools.
Are there steps we as individual Baby Boomers can take to help in this situation? Here is a possible action list.
1) Offer low-cost or free tutoring for students. While you may feel your own skills are lacking, you will still be able to help these students. Nothing improves our own skills like teaching them to someone else.
2) Check
with your local library or church to see if there are volunteer
opportunities to help school-age students with their homework.
3) Volunteer in your local schools to be an after-school tutor.
4) Don’t be afraid to tutor middle school and high school age students. This is the time they need help the most. Their
own parents may be working two or more jobs and have very little time
to help them but empty-nest and retired Baby Boomers do have the time.
It may very well be true that the Baby Boomers had an educational advantage over students today. Even
though there were more students in every classroom 40 years ago, most
of the time teachers were stricter and more was expected of students. Students
were expected to sit and listen to their teachers, to do the work
assigned, and the consequences of not doing these things were harsher. Teachers did not rely so much on videos to do their teaching for them.
Additionally, many Baby Boomers had a good, strong work ethic model presented by parents and family for them to follow. Baby Boomers were told that to get ahead in life they would have to work hard and do their work in an efficient manner. They were taught not to expect any shortcuts to success. They
were encouraged to get a good education by working hard in school and
to continue working hard for a good education if they went on to
college. By and large, more Baby Boomers started college then following generations, even if they didn’t graduate. There were no remedial English or math courses when they began college. Those who lacked the skills, flunked out. The consequences of a poor education or poor skills began to show up early in their lives. Perhaps the same values are being taught by families and schools today but why do we see a lower level of capability?
There may well be a shortage of skilled workers in the next few years but the severity can and must be lowered. Baby Boomers must play a big role in making sure this shortage is less severe and temporary.
The
real gap, then, involves selected skills, not head counts. The question
is not whether there will be enough workers, but whether there will be
enough qualified workers on U.S. soil to do the work at an acceptable cost.
Education. U.S.
efforts to groom homegrown talent for the work challenges of the 21st
century aren’t panning out. Middle- and high-school students fare poorly
on international comparisons of math and science achievement. Even in
basic English, more than 60 percent of employers rate high-school
graduates’ skills as fair or poor. In postsecondary education, more than
half of all entering college students never graduate. “U.S.
schools are not tough enough to meet global standards,” says William
Rothwell, SPHR, professor of workforce education and development at Penn State University in University Park, Pa. “Americans are incredibly ignorant about the challenges they face in the global market.”
In
addition to keeping current with technology, the growing importance of
knowledge-based work favors strong nonroutine cognitive skills, such as
abstract reasoning, problem-solving, communication and collaboration. As
retention becomes more crucial in the talent wars, HR will need to
earmark greater resources to continuing education through training,
schooling and knowledge transfer.
Fortune’s Anne Fisher says:
A. For starters, two words: Things change. Since your son is partial to
statistics, show him these. By 2010, the U.S. Department of Labor
expects that U.S. companies will face a shortage of slightly more than
10 million workers. (That's partly because, while about 70 million baby
boomers will retire—or at least reach retirement age—over the next 15
years, only 40 million new workers are expected to enter the workforce
during the same period.) "This has happened before," says Neil
Lebovits, president and COO of a specialty-staffing firm called Ajilon
(http://www.ajilonfinance.com). "But when the 2010 labor shortage hits,
it will supercede the one we faced in the late '90s, when companies
bowed to their employees'
Service industries that require knowledge workers with specialized skills
will be hit the hardest, he adds. "There are more than 90 million
Americans whose literacy and numeric skills are at the 10th-grade level
or below," says Lebovits. "If you consider education and training, the
coming talent shortage and 'talent wars' will be even more serious."
Hmm, let's see, in the year 2010, your son will be about 24 years old,
right? If he does go to college and maybe even grad school, he'll very
likely be in the enviable position of hitting the job market just when
demand for educated workers is cresting. But, hey, he needn't take my
word (or yours) for why going to college is generally a good idea. A year
or so of supporting himself, or trying to, by working at a minimum-wage
job could be pretty persuasive, too.
“U.S.
efforts to groom homegrown talent for the work challenges of the 21st
century aren’t panning out. Middle- and high-school students fare poorly
on international comparisons of math and science achievement. Even in
basic English, more than 60 percent of employers rate high-school
graduates’ skills as fair or poor. In postsecondary education, more than
half of all entering college students never graduate.” From Robert Grossman, HR Magazine, The Truth About the Coming Labor Shortage.
Still,
“too many employers haven’t thought it through, saying they’ll worry
about it when it happens,” Heet says. “If you wait, you’ll get caught
flat-footed. The time to plan is now; you can’t do it overnight.”
Other sources completely disagree and say there will be no labor shortage.
Those who argue that no shortage will develop are relying on improved technologies for production. They believe that technology has already displaced many workers and that it will continue to do so. They
also believe that a decreasing demand for goods and services will help
to even out any possible labor shortage. In addition, the continuing
transfer of manufacturing jobs to overseas sources will reduce the need
for replacement workers.
No comments:
Post a Comment